Lone Mothers' Economic Inclusion

With support from Women and Gender Equality Canada, the Centre for Family Equity partnered with the UBC School of Social Work to study the impact of the pandemic on low-income lone mother workers and those accessing income and disability assistance in BC from 2022-2024. Peer researchers engaged 165 lone mothers through a survey, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews across the province between September 2022 to May 2023.

The pandemic had a drastic socioeconomic impact on lone mothers in BC.

Our No Way to Escape: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Low-Income Lone-Mother Workerin BC report and data lights the way to policy solutions to bring about lone mothers’ economic inclusion and recovery in BC.

Our Lone Mothers’ Economic Inclusion initiative is led by a team of 18 mothers impacted by poverty on four regional impact committees: Northern BC, Vancouver Island & Coast, Interior, and Metro Vancouver.

Resources:

The State of Lone-Parent Poverty in BC

Already vulnerable due to their high rates of poverty and precarious work, when the pandemic hit, everything became alarmingly worse. Lone-parent family poverty in BC – and across Canada – rapidly increased; from 2021 to 2022, child poverty in lone-parent families in BC jumped by a whopping 12.6% (First Call, 2024).

As of 2022, 76,190 children and youth are being raised in poverty in lone-parent households in BC and 79% percent of these families are led by mothers (First Call, 2024).

Priority Recommendations

Address the Gendered and Lone Parent Nature of Family Poverty in BC

Recognize the needs of lone-parent single-income families and lone mothers and apply a Gender-based Analysis Plus lens in all policy development and poverty reduction measures.
Accelerate the building of all forms of affordable non-market housing across the province particularly for families with incomes below $90,000.
Make counselling a fully MSP-billable service within the healthcare system and provide a minimum of 24 hours of counselling per year, per person, for low-income individuals.
Introduce an additional Early Years Success Supplement for all families receiving the BC Family Benefit with children aged five and under.

Enable Labour Market Access

Raise the income and disability rates to the Market Basket Measure and index them to inflation.
Remove the earning exemption (AEE) for those accessing disability assistance.
Annualize the earnings exemption for those accessing income assistance and raise it above the poverty line.
Remove restrictions on education and training access for parents on income and disability assistance; expand the Single Parents’ Employment Initiative.
Provide priority access to $10-a-Day childcare to parents accessing income and disability assistance, particularly those in the expected-to-work category.
Transition all interested child care programs to $10-a-Day sites to create up to 50,000 fully publicly funded spaces; prioritize the $10-a-Day ChildCareBC centres in child care deserts and recognize non-standard shift work.
Establish full province-wide public delivery of before-and-after-school care in our public school system.

Create Equitable Working Standards for Lone Parents

Ensure that employers provide all full and part-time workers with extended health benefits.
Implement the ABC model as the legal test for determining employee status, reverse the onus of proof so workers are considered employees unless the employer can prove otherwise, and eliminate exemptions and carve-outs to the Employment Standards Act.
Provide an additional five days of employer-paid sick days per year for caregiving responsibilities related to dependents’ and other family members’ sickness and care needs.

Address the Vulnerability of At-Risk Families in a State of Emergency

Designate all intimate-partner and gender-based violence services including transition shelters and legal aid as essential services with guaranteed uninterrupted service.
Create a permanent Provincial State of Emergency Vulnerable Populations Task Force with a mandate to address the needs of low-income and marginalized children, youth, and families

Further Background Information

Economic inclusion for lone mothers is crucial to addressing child, youth, and family poverty in BC and a central and urgent area of focus for the Centre for Family Equity.

Our recent Justice at Work for Lone Mothers in BC project and research report, No Way to Escape: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Low-Income Lone-Mother Workers in BC were foundational initiatives leading to policy recommendations that would improve the lives of lone mothers and their families.

With renewed support from Women and Gender Equality Canada, the Centre for Family Equity has embarked on a new project to amplicy our research and recommendations. This project consists of two years of knowledge mobilization and advocacy led by regional committees of lone mothers with lived experience of the issues we are addressing. The project builds on our research and aims to promote lone mothers’ economic inclusion through policy change driven by our evidence-based recommendations.

This project is supported by Women and Gender Equality Canada and runs until March 2026.

Our four Regional Impact Committees comprising lone mothers who have lived experience of poverty and economic exclusion are leading advocacy to impact policy change. The project is guided by an Indigenous coordinator who advises all four Regional Impact Committees at a provincial level, Committee members raise public awareness about the Centre for Family Equity's policy recommendations and are dedicated to outreach and engagement with local and provincial stakeholders in their regions. Committee members deliver presentations and attend meetings to present our recommendations.

Please email [email protected] if you are interested in a presentation to your group.

Our research

In March 2024, we released a first-of-its-kind research report, No Way to Escape: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Low-Income Lone-Mother Workers in BC. This report includes 28 policy recommendations to the provincial and federal governments.

In December 2023, the Centre for Family Equity released A Whole Life: The Impact of $10 a Day Child Care on the Health and Socioeconomic Well-being of Low-Income Lone Mothers in BC with a suite of 10 recommendations to the provincial and federal governments.

Support for this Initiative

This project has been supported through Women and Gender Equality Canada's Women's Program.